Archive of Our Own ^beta

Itadori Yuuji picks up a beaten and old doll with a bittersweet smile.

His new round of first-years are excitable. One is a girl who’s just been introduced properly to sorcery, who can’t yet control her energy.

This happens once a year, at least. Yuuji dusts the old basement, pats down the couch, buys the best snacks, and whips out the movie collection. His students all groan and question how this could ever help, and just like 10 years ago, Yuuji watches with a grin as they get sucker punched. 

Gojo Satoru had mentioned being forgotten, but Yuuji holds steadfast in the reply he had all those years ago. He could never forgot Gojo-sensei. Even if everyone else did, how could he ever forget the man who saved him? Who let him live? The man that treated him with care and kindness—who had been tempted to slaughter the higher-ups at the sight of his corpse? (That one is told to him a few years after Gojo Satoru’s death date. A somber Christmas Eve, where Yuuji stands with one Ieri Shoko at twin graves and cleans off the engravings of black and white fish.)

His students will never know who Gojo truly was. Yuuji surely didn’t, either. But who knows their true self? 15 year-old him would’ve said this thought process was too complicated, but Yuuji is 25 and he knows that you will never truly get yourself. That’s okay. Why did he swallow that finger? To save Megumi. Why does he still visit the graves of Junpei, Junpei’s mother, and Nanami? Regret. Why does he stop every time he sees the memorial for the Shibuya deaths? Atonement. He could change all of those answers, really. He needed cursed energy, he misses them, he wants to honor the dead.

Who knows? 

His students will never know Gojo Satoru, nor will Yuuji ever fully get Gojo Satoru. Then again, Gojo Satoru never quite got himself, so it’s only right no one else can put the puzzle that he is together.

Instead, Yuuji stands in the same place Gojo did 10 years ago and chuckles the same way Gojo did, as his student is punched by a stuffed animal. He sneaks up on whoever is watching the movie, he spoils the endings because the indignant screeches are his favorite part of teaching.

He writes movie reviews whenever he watches something, and he stops by Junpei’s grave weekly to tell the boy everything. Junpei, who he outlived. 

Those reviews get shared with Gojo-sensei, too. After all, it’s only right Gojo is spoiled on all these new films, after the onslaught of spoilers Yuuji endured in that basement.

He deactivates the stuffed toy, tucks it away, sweeps away the trash, and locks the basement. Megumi is down the path chatting with Nobara and Maki, and Yuuji sends a fleeting grin to the basement that holds his yearning for simpler days.

Yes, he wishes Gojo-sensei was the one spoiling the movies. But he can hold the torch until his time comes. And then he’ll arrive in whatever is after, and envelop a certain white-haired teacher in a much needed hug.

I have grieved you longer than I knew you. I have loved you longer than I knew you. I knew you. I knew you. 

I will not forget you.